Marineland 150DD cube build

[Custom05Taco]

Nice

Sent from my ADR6300 using Tapatalk

 

[CancerverO]

sweet tank!!! I am not big fan of cubes but this is really nice..

 

[Tonyscoots84]

cant wait to see what you do with this cube :biggrin:

 

[pauliwalnuts]

Love the shower liner trick myself. :wink1:
Keep those pics coming.

 

[Bigkahuna]

Love the shower liner trick myself. :wink1:
Keep those pics coming.

Yeah I've never put a tank on a hardwood floor before so I'm a little paranoid of sump overflows or any number of everyday spills that aren't major but could damage the floor nonetheless. The PVC liner came out pretty decent. I've never worked with it before but was familiar with it and being 40mil thick and relatively tough it makes for a pretty nice waterproof tub that even will have a little vibration damping characteristics as well. The Marineland stand worked out especially well for this application because it is built like a tub on the bottom so if it fills to its rough capacity of 15-20 gallons of water the sides will hold it up and it won't flop over. For around $25 in parts, it took almost an entire 8oz. can of PVC cement because this was a heck of a lot more surface area than some fittings , it was well worth it IMHO.

Some updates:

I got some black adhesive vinyl at a local sign shop for around $12:

I used some soapy water and an old iTunes GC to squeegee out the bubbles:

I got 90% of the bubbles out and only left a few in the overflow area which won't be seen. That said I was VERY disappointed how it turned out as it was all white and splotchy looking from the front as a result of soap residue I think. I was going to rip it off and get a new piece but because of the holidays I had to drive up to my Bro's house upstate this weekend and I just left it alone over the weekend. It was fortuitous timing as it turned out because letting it sit there apparently let the residue evaporate/dissipate and now it looks jet black and about as good as paint IMHO:

There are a few very tiny bubbles that are barely visible which I'm not gonna sweat about. I was a little concerned about doing the vinyl but I didn't really want to deal with paint and as it turned out I'm 100% happy with the results.

Next up: I have to build the post on the back to mount the swingarm light assembly.

 

[evoIX_Reefer]

details on the swingarm light assembly please!?

 

[TimberTDI]

Yes more details on the swing arm and also how did you preform the shower liner to fit?

Steven

 

[Bigkahuna]

Yes more details on the swing arm and also how did you preform the shower liner to fit?

Steven

The shower liner was simply made by measuring the inside dimensions of the stand and cutting two pieces of wood to about 1/4" less than that dimension to leave some room for the folds (page 2 of this thread has a photo of the wood and clamps on the liner). I drew a box on the bottom of the liner to keep me honest, make sure to leave enough on each side to fold it over so if you want a 4" wall make the sides 8" at least to leave space to fold it over on itself, and folded the sides up and clamped them with the wood to make a nice crease. Then after the walls and bottoms were nicely creased I applied the pvc cement to the middle 3/4 of the side and clamped them down again for an hour or so, I left the outer 1/4 of each side initially w/o cement to leave some play to make some hospital corners which would have been harder to do with the side completely cemented. I did this on each side and then just folded the corners in a rudimentary hospital corner and clamped them down to keep the cement in contact better. I left some liner peeking out of the corners when I trimmed some excess off to make a point to secure the liner with screws but it stands up pretty well on its own without securing but I'll probably still put some holds up to make it look more neat.

The PVC is pretty flexible so you don't have to be exact to be honest. I had toyed with the idea of making a box to form the liner over but the two pieces of wood and clamps worked pretty well and probably better than the box form would have been for making nice sharp creases.

The swingarm is simply a black multi-monitor mount I got on Amazon for just over $60. The reason I decided to go this way is mostly due to the oddball 36x36 dimensions of the 150DD. The Radions are supposed to cover roughly a 24"x24" area so depending on my aquascape I might need to play around with where I want the lights to be positioned. This seemed like the most flexible mount solution I could go with. I chose the mount I went with mostly because the arms have the reach I needed, actually they seem to be longer than I even expected, and these arms only move in the horizontal plane which means that if the joints loosen they can only swing side to side and not down which could potentially take my Radions for an undesired swim I plan on bolting a wooden post of sorts to the back of the stand and bolting the swingarm to the top of that. The arms terminate in a VESA mount which I'm simply going to attach small extenders to reach the 4 bolt holes of the Radions.

Heres the photo again from page 2:

 

[Bigkahuna]

Update:

I started working on the mount for the lights. I'm undecided if I should go with a doubled up 1x6 or a single 1x6 and some 1x1 steel square tubes. I have some steel square tubes lying around that I was toying with using. I'm just worried about the mount exerting force on the aquarium top frame etc..

 

[motortrendz]

nice job..

 

[Bigkahuna]

nice job..

Thanks. Sorry or the slow progress but this is probably going to be a little while before I get it up and running. Here are some updates on the light mounting:


I finally got the Radions fitted and fired up over the empty tank for a look see. I currently have the pair of Rads over another tank which will be broken down in the near future but I decided to get them over the new tank temporarily to see how they light it up. I was concerned about lighting the 36x36 tank and wanted flexibility to move the lights at will so I decided to use a multi LCD swingarm by securing them to a post to the back of the stand. I used some stainless rivets to secure projector extension brackets to the standard VESA plate and they turned out to be the perfect size for the Radion hole spacing. It isn't the most elegant looking thing but I like the look and it came out pretty nice IMHO, not to mention I can move them around to suit my aquascape. Following are some photos:

Brackets

Stainless rivets for strength and they look nice to boot on my PS template.

Over the tank

Couple of closer looks:

Fired up and in position they look super bright and overlap a decent amount from the 9 inches they are over where I project the water level to be. The overlap should help the PAR down lower.

Closer look at the spread:

With the right unit off the spread of one alone looks pretty impressive so the two together should do nicely as a PAR multiplier and give decent coverage IMHO:

I'm pretty happy with the way it all came out, I just can't wait to get this whole build up and running.

 

[Ziggy]

Looking good!any update on this little baby?lol......

 

[Bigkahuna]

Hey, have some some new shots I need to upload. I finished the sheet PVC base for the rock work and am now in the process fitting rocks and erecting a framework attached to the base PVC base.

 

[Mike389]

nice tank... the led's look great... good luck

 

[dubs]

nice another 150 in the building i see a few more 150 been put up keep up the good work i only disagree on one aspect of ur build i dont believe in pvc/rod/glue/ect i am a stack till 4 on the am to get the aquascaping u like kinda guy but ill have wait to see what u come up with cant wait to see it filled tho

 

[Bigkahuna]

nice another 150 in the building i see a few more 150 been put up keep up the good work i only disagree on one aspect of ur build i dont believe in pvc/rod/glue/ect i am a stack till 4 on the am to get the aquascaping u like kinda guy but ill have wait to see what u come up with cant wait to see it filled tho

Yeah I decided to do things the really hard way and have a large PVC sheet under the sand on which I'm going to drill holes and mount PVC rod/pipe so I can have as little rock in contact with the bottom as possible. I'm thinking of stump like base rock with arms coming off it in a tree-like structure. I like the idea of almost all the bottom an open sand bed and very little area for any kind of detritus.

This is the 3/4" PVC sheet with the notch cut out for the overflow:

Dry fitted in the tank:

I wasn't happy with the way it sat against the silicone and was afraid it would potentially cut the silicone if it shifted so I chamfered the edges to under cut it so it can't contact any of the silicone:

How it sits in the tank:

 

[Bigkahuna]

Just a quick update with some photos of the rock work progress as I just got the rock work all set up in the tank:

You can see the step by step here and note only two rocks will be contacting the bottom and they sit right on the PVC so nothing will get under them, I have a small Hammer and a largish Acan that will sit on the bottom but that's about it?

Some more shots:

 

[james1990]

i love the rockwork, and the whole progress of the build. I am about to pull the trigger on the deep blue 60gal cube and might want to try something similar with my aquascape. any suggestions or tips? will anything harmfull ever get under that pvc sheet?

 

[Bigkahuna]

i love the rockwork, and the whole progress of the build. I am about to pull the trigger on the deep blue 60gal cube and might want to try something similar with my aquascape. any suggestions or tips? will anything harmfull ever get under that pvc sheet?

The PVC sheet itself is quite heavy, probably 40lbs, and is perfectly flat so all you need to do is make sure the bottom of the tank and the PVC is spotless. The only problem I've found is the smooth on smooth surface make the whole thing real slippery so it shifts as I worked on it. This will be retified when I back fill all the gaps with the sand but this is more of an installation thing. As to tips I'd just say get a cheap foot long masonry drill bit, I paid like $12 at HD, and start drilling. For the main pieces of rock the more solid and heavy the better. Generally pourous lightweight rock is better for live rock but for building something like this heavy and dense is easier to drill without breaking it to bits and stronger to withstand being a structural support. Of utmost importance is to do this all in the dry and outside the tank and plan on building it so it comes appart really easily as you can see in the animated gif above. It would be impossible to lift this thing into the tank all in one piece

 

[Bigkahuna]

Just some updates:

I tweaked the rockscape a bit by rotating the large plate coral skeleton on the left to the left side instead of near the back and rotated the whole thing more toward the center of the tank to make looking at the two big arms better from the front. This rock-on-a-stick method makes it much easier to tweak the rockwork Finally I got the water and sand in:

I went with Tropic Eden Tonga Reeflakes, so far I have only 30lbs in the tank, I bought two 30lbs. bags though, but might only use the one as it looks like it has decent coverage with only the 30:

I love the grain size not being too big or too small and am super impressed that with just a little rinse they barely clouded the tank and a while later it looks like this:

A shot from down below in the stand you can see the Reefflakes nicely packed up against the sheet PVC:

The cutout I made for the overflow in the sheet PVC actually makes a nice overflow cover, all I need is to rout the edge to make it sit flush in the top and sand/polish the front, I even like the gray color